Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Axiom Factory Tour

This was a great video worth watching. Man has Axiom spent some dough on machinery. it's also great to see a company spend so much on testing the limits of it's products!

https://youtu.be/iXkuH9awY0g

Can you imagine how much fun it is to work there?

"Ian, I just spent six months and a hundred grand of your money designing a new woofer. But then I vaporized it in the torture chamber".

"Atta boy, Mojo. Obviously that's not one we want in production. Here's another hundred grand. Better luck next time."

I also enjoyed watching that. Super good job by the interviewer. What a factory. I agree Rebulx lots of money spent on machines and in house quality building of everything. When you think about what your getting, even at today’s higher prices ( mojo addresses this in another post I can’t remember where in a comparison if v2 v4 ) I feel like the value is incredible. And I gotta say I really love the low key humble persona the company has. In my opinion of course. I love the romance of the quiet one working hard and improving and carefully making gains until POW! Stunner products are produced at the behest of others the poo poo the process. Anybody lining up to do a double blind listening test? B and W? Paradigm? Klipsch? Martin Logan? Anyone? Crickets.......

Edit: ok. That was a bit of rant. Maybe I over did it. But you all get my point. I think it’s an admiral process to put your meat out there blind......always improving. Ian says it nicely when he’s describing the sound window lines etc that’s there’s always room to get better. Great philosophy.

Edit 2: I’d like to see brands that are selling comparable priced up to double the price do double blind listening test. I’d fly out for our that to the beautiful Canadian sheild. !!

That sounds really dangerous!

I had to chuckle when I saw a couple of the comments concerning the factory in which one particular "genius" said he thought the factory was a dump. I am not sure when you have a place that is cutting huge amounts of wood, assembly lines and putting electronics together, I suppose they expected it to be like a missile base and you should be able to eat off the floor. Axiom still is a relatively small company.

The fact is, sound and designing speakers was always Ian's passion and let's face it, very few of us have the opportunity or will to take that passion, turn it into a viable long existing company and make a living at it.

I’ve not been to Axioms factory, fully intended to make the 35th anniversary gtg but my sons backed out on me. Axiom is around 6 hours from me. Next one!
That was great hearing from Ian.
I have been to a local, to me, speaker builder for a tour.
And indeed, where wood was being machined/worked with there was inevitably dust everywhere. Comes with the process.
Besides, the dust gives the facility character!
Jeff

If you search this forum, you will find may people who have toured the factory - including me, but my first tour was in 1991, and it was vastly different than it is today! It truly was a "garageworks" in 1991 and I beleive I included pictures from that tour.

Not to generate more work for Ian and company, but if you are in the area you should make arrangements and drop in. The factory is humble in stature, and does not look like a place that produces the incredible product that it does!

Here is hoping next years anniversary is able to happen! The last two were great experiences (partying at Ian's house with a live band in his boathouse playing through M80's was amazing!)...even for someone who has been an owner since the 1990 purchase of AX3's!

I imagine the reason for conflicting opinions on the factory appearance is a matter of what the viewer is focusing on.

If you look at the factory as a whole, yeah it's this great big seemingly random collection of areas working on different aspects of the products, with no apparent master plan and leftover equipment from previous iterations of the factory stuffed in corners waiting to be pulled out and used for something else. I guess you could call that a dump in comparison to a factory that had been created from scratch in the last couple of years based on latest technology. Depending on when you visit there might be car or airplane parts lying around for whatever Ian's latest project is.

On the other hand if you look at the factory from the perspective of actual speaker design and production it's very impressive, with all kinds of innovative equipment spread out through the development and production processes and a small team of employees who have been working on high end audio most of their lives and are really passionate about the products.

It's old and retro - not dirty. For those who aren't aware of the history, the Axiom factory was a closed down furniture factory when Ian purchased it. Legend has it, the owner of the factory heard a pair of Ian's home-made speakers and agreed to trade the factory for the speaker pair. Eventually he expanded it.

You heard it. He's torture-testing a 1500W mono amp.

At around 17 minutes in, there are some weird-looking speaker topologies that never saw the light of the production floor.

Very cool tour.